I am a bit dissapoint with NA 120

[Nasturtium]

  It is great to have a 120 man server to play on, and I have been having fun, but I have several major concerns and questions I would like to address and have addressed. Please do not use this thread to bring up peripheral  issues involving the state of NA servers, my intent is to bring up real issues in hopes of helping the admins resolve them, thank you.

  1. Lack of aggressive admin oversight: I have seen a ton of leeching, racism ,camping in unreachable spots and general shananagins going on with little to no response from the small group of admins.

  Q: Are there any more plans to bring in more ancillary admins into the server? Is the drive to keep the keys to the server under lock and key by not naming more admins hurting the server? Why are players getting away with so much BS?

 2. The map rotation is broken and needs fixing: Many of the maps are ok, but I am sure everyone will agree that there are too many large open maps where both sides get lost, and half the round is spent watching some afk player autorun into the map edge. There also seems to be many maps with ridiculous elevation changes, and maps with the spawns much too far away from eachother. Many of the native maps have already been tweaked for balance by the mapping community, but have been reverted to the old broken spawns.

  Q: We have a huge and active custom map making community, are there any plans to incorporate the more popular of these maps into the rotation? If not why? Who is in control of the rotation and why have they made little to no effort to engage our mapping community?

There are more issues, but the ones stated here are the most pressing ones. If anyone knows for certain the answer to these questions, please respond, if you have unfocused, non constructive criticism, go elsewhere please.

[Tears of Destiny]

All very good points.

1. Lack of aggressive admin oversight: I have seen a ton of leeching, racism ,camping in unreachable spots and general shananagins going on with little to no response from the small group of admins.

  Q: Are there any more plans to bring in more ancillary admins into the server? Is the drive to keep the keys to the server under lock and key by not naming more admins hurting the server? Why are players getting away with so much BS?

Players are getting away with unusal amounts of BS because it is a new group of admins and some people are still hesitant to use their powers as they are new. I also was in a rather good mood and prefering to warn people before kicking etc. I basically have been giving everyone a "fresh start" on the servers, and keeping a mental list of repeat offenders, so that is why I did not ban the infamous Goatek instantly for leeching, and actually issued a few warnings first. Now though repeat offenders are pretty much being nailed consistently (at least when I am playing).

As for the lack of Admins, I think they want to make sure that we are reliable before they try and graduate a second batch of admins, hence why we do not have full powers nor yellow official pips yet. The server is still rather new I think.

Also, I highly encourage people to use the I key more often to inform us when something is going on, as I can not watch everything at the same time.

2. The map rotation is broken and needs fixing: Many of the maps are ok, but I am sure everyone will agree that there are too many large open maps where both sides get lost, and half the round is spent watching some afk player autorun into the map edge. There also seems to be many maps with ridiculous elevation changes, and maps with the spawns much too far away from eachother. Many of the native maps have already been tweaked for balance by the mapping community, but have been reverted to the old broken spawns.

  Q: We have a huge and active custom map making community, are there any plans to incorporate the more popular of these maps into the rotation? If not why? Who is in control of the rotation and why have they made little to no effort to engage our mapping community?

This can be blamed fully on the Official NA servers using the EU maps... which shows that they have a strange love interest in massive open maps with lots of villages, and only a handful of maps that break this... I don't know why they like those maps, but I do agree that the majority of NA thinks they get old and pretty fast... I would love to see new maps.

I have mentioned many times using my Pink Text Powers that I encourage anyone to try and make a map, and post it for consideration to be inserted into the map rotation. This offer still stands, though I promise nothing. I would encourage more people to make more maps that are not open flat plains with a random village in the middle, for the NA servers. If it is awesome enough, perhaps it will be incorporated into the map rotation.
All in all I will start cracking down harder on people and bask in the innumerable complaints of "You can't ban me for that I have always done that! yadda yadda yadda, rabble rabble rabble!"

Regardless, I have banned a dozen and a half people in the past week, so I am not sure it can be said that I have been too lax. I was afraid of taking up half the ban list actually...

EDIT:
Here is my stance, give or take:

• Permanent Bans on offensive names will be handed out.
• Racism is handed an initial 1 week ban.
• Leeching is given warnings, a kick, then a 3 day ban.
• TKing is given warnings and then a 3 day ban.
• Griefing is warnings, then a kick, then a couple days depending on what they do.
• Chat abuse (slurs etc) are warnings then a mute. I hand out mutes freely, like it or not. You can still play just fine with a mute. You get a ban if I am tired of having to mute you every time I log on.
• Exploitation is a 5 day ban for small things like camping flag with enemy at siege to leech forever, or longer if you did something truely stupid.

Obviously repeat offenders earn special points for longer bans.

I don't know how this compares to others, but there you go.[/list][/list][/list][/list]

[Nasturtium]

  Thank you for the great response Tears, I appreciate you taking the time.

I have mentioned many times using my Pink Text Powers that I encourage anyone to try and make a map, and post it for consideration to be inserted into the map rotation. This offer still stands, though I promise nothing. I would encourage more people to make more maps that are not open flat plains with a random village in the middle, for the NA servers. If it is awesome enough, perhaps it will be incorporated into the map rotation.

  Does this mean you are the one in control of the map rotation? If so I am sure you are aware of the hundreds of maps that are in the scene editing subforums, under the (neglected, it takes me hours to update) 'finished maps' thread sticky.  If you would like a rundown of the better ones I would be happy to oblige, or you could just look through them. Leaving it up to the mappers to contact you with each new map seems like reinventing the wheel, and is a dark road you might not want to go down (ask Airith).  There are many maps that have already been tried and failed, so please try to be somewhat disseminating in your selections. Cheers!

[Tears of Destiny]

I am not in charge of the map rotation, though the same guidlines for getting maps into EU likely hold true for NA.
I would recommend contacting Shik on questions about that as the NA servers are her project last I checked.

I could push for a stickied topic for NA Official map submissions, that may help. I don't blame mappers being hesitant/confused as right now it is a little mysterious on how to submitt new maps and such.

[PhantomZero]

lol "tweaked for balance", most of the maps on the ATS community servers are awful, it is very refreshing to play some better maps that aren't designed around forcing players to fight in a tiny box in order to get the most xp. This is a big reason I think why EU players tend to favor characters with high agi and athletics.

Let's give each admin a banning quota, 5 players a week at least.

[Nasturtium]

You... are confused.

Maps have not been designed that way for months, almost every single map int he NA100 that is not a native map has been deigned by both eu and na map makers. There are some good maps and bad maps, but the rotation is constantly modified.

It is nice to have wide open maps now and again, and a good balance overall, but if you lean too heavily in a direction the server becomes uninteresting.

[Varric]

Shik is in Europe and won't tell us why because she likes to shirk her duties.

+1 for Tears head NA admin.

[joshko]

I support the Tears agenda.

[rustyspoon]

2. The map rotation is broken and needs fixing: Many of the maps are ok, but I am sure everyone will agree that there are too many large open maps where both sides get lost, and half the round is spent watching some afk player autorun into the map edge. There also seems to be many maps with ridiculous elevation changes, and maps with the spawns much too far away from eachother. Many of the native maps have already been tweaked for balance by the mapping community, but have been reverted to the old broken spawns.

That's the big reason why I don't like to play on the official servers. The maps are overall TERRIBLE. It gets annoying constantly running up hills, scouring the far corners of the maps for stragglers and god forbid there's fog...

[SeQuel]

Agreed maps are GOD awful ESPECIALLY when fog is on, it ends up in 2-3 rounds taking 4 minutes just for the majority of players to find each other until people learn where the spawns are. It's retarded and I agree the Battle Community has FAR better versions of native maps and custom.

EDIT: Far to many hilly maps, or open maps where your attacking a village and you gotta run up a 200ft open field to get to a defend village. Maybe It's just my opinion but as a archer this is nearly impossible with all of the cavalry, and archers shooting on me while I move and I think 2hander's or anyone without a shield can say the same. *Don't say work together with the community as it rarely happens*.

I also agree on the lack of admins. Many times I have seen someone afk run  at a start of a round then be the last one alive on a edge of the map and no one can find him, or just people who are afk.

Something needs to be done for both of these issues as I think its seriously driving away the population. I know there have been PLENTY of times where I would get off the server just for 1-2 maps as they were horrible.

[Smoothrich]

Some spawn points could be moved around a bit so it isn't always one team in a plain and the other in a town.  I'm also usually annoyed by maps that are too hilly, I don't think anyone enjoys fighting at 1/10th the speed.  However, the overall map aesthetic is SO much better then ATS rotation, which is full of camped corridors and campable rooftops where the annoying NA playstyles of delaying with arbalests and strength stacked close quarters shielders/whatever ruin the matches.  If you want those maps, play on another server??

I agree that some more custom maps could be added, but god forbid the maps are now actual medieval battlefield styled maps instead of DE_Dust2 copy and pasted a hundred times.  Mostly, you guys are all just terrified of cavalry, who can actually influence the matches now since the ranged can't (as often) camp inaccessible places.

Eventually it would be ideal if there was a nice variety, but if the official server only concentrated on uploading QUALITY maps of any variety, it'd be great.

[Nasturtium]

 Great points, I agree, quality maps only. Also, the victory flag locations need changing drastically.

[Thucydides]

I would gladly be an NA admin, but i'll be really heavy handed because i hate leachers/retards that stand on ladders/delayers etc etc.

I would probably goretooth it up because warband+stupids make me rage hard

[SeQuel]

I would gladly be an NA admin, but i'll be really heavy handed because i hate leachers/retards that stand on ladders/delayers etc etc.

I would probably goretooth it up because warband+stupids make me rage hard

Exactly why you shouldn't be admin, no offence. There are a lot of "stupids" in Warband.

[Ecko]

Anyone is better then the current NA Official administration. If tears wants to give the time, give him a shot!